Facts? We don’t need no stinking facts. Note the protesters on the right is showing an AR-15 to protest a pistol-only event.

The anti-cop anarchist left is losing their minds over the National Rifle Association’s (NRA) National Police Shooting Competition (NPSC), which is being held in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The contest has been held annually for more than half a century, and features civilian and military law enforcement shooters from the United States and other countries.

In previous years the National Rifle Association’s (NRA) National Police Shooting Competition (NPSC) included events with names like “Head Shots Only,” in which the event’s course description contends that police officers need to practice shooting directly at people’s heads.

Courses like this are only one of the many reasons why, in Albuquerque, New Mexico, activists and family members of police shootings victims call the annual NPSC the “killer cop contest.”

The competition is set to begin September 15 at Shooting Range Park in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The contest brings together more than 500 officers from various law enforcement agencies across the country to judge who’s best at using lethal weapons. A similar regional shooting competition has already begun.

The NRA’s law enforcement division has organized the NPSC annually since its first competition in Iowa in 1962, actively reaching out to officers and inviting them to the contest. This year law enforcement officers from as far away as Germany and Venezuela are expected to attend, according to NRA spokesman Lars Dalseide.

Long-time organizers against police violence in Albuquerque who have attended previous tournaments describe the competition as a celebration of the heavily militarized policing tactics and practices that have been at the center of a national firestorm in the aftermath of the militant police response to protests in Ferguson, Missouri, over the killing of unarmed black teenager Michael Brown.

“These are events that celebrate the efficiency in coordinated use of lethal force, using high-powered military weaponry,” said David Correia, a University of New Mexico American studies professor and local organizer. “This is not some sort of municipal police conference … if it were just about municipal policing it wouldn’t just be about the use of high-powered weaponry; there would also be events about community policing or ways for officers to show their proficiency in community engagement.”

On Saturday, the first day of the National Rifle Association-sponsored National Police Shooting Championships in Albuquerque, demonstrators staged a mock funeral procession on the road to the shooting range, forcing competitors to the shoulder. On Sunday, protesters shot foam bullets and water guns at targets in a city park. The protesters note that since 2009, 32 people have been fatally shot by Albuquerque police. The most recent case that sparked outrage was in May when James Boyd, an unarmed homeless man, was shot in the back at his makeshift campground in the foothills of the nearby Sandia Mountains.

In April, the Department of Justice released a scathing report citing APD’s use of excessive force that violated the constitutional rights of the victims.

“This is the year the [DOJ] report confirmed our department has used excessive and lethal force unconstitutionally and this is not the time for police to be shooting targets in a competition that looks like people,” said Sayrah Namaste, spokeswoman for the Albuquerque Coalition to Stop Police Brutality. “They should be stressing de-escalation skills, not shooting skills.”

Let me see if I understand their “logic.”

The protesters don’t like law enforcement officers who fire prematurely or unnecessarily at a suspect.

The protesters don’t like law enforcement officers who fire too many shots at a suspect.

The protesters don’t like law enforcement officers who shoot too accurately at a suspect.

The protesters don’t like law enforcement officers who practice head shots.

As a general rule, people (not just police officers) fire their weapons prematurely, unnecessarily, or too many times when they are scared and they lack confidence in their ability to engage a threat with a given weapon system.

In any given self-defense scenario, you are far more likely to see a noncombatant shot by someone with little to no training than you are someone who has lots of training and regular practice. The reason for this is very simple: people who don’t train don’t know their capabilities or limitations, and know that their ability to competently use the weapon in their hands is very low. They are more likely to get on the trigger faster, fire more shots, and miss more times than a trained shooter in almost every conceivable scenario.